Michael Hayes, founder and one-hour-per-day principal of AdultWebmasterSchool.com, is not the type of adult-industry-porn-for-you-old-schoolers executive who hides his vocational doubts behind the bluster about whom—and how much—he makes. Hayes, 29, is the type who wears his misgivings on the sleeve of his decidedly blingless blue shirt, the type who wonders “every day” why he's in the business, the type who wouldn't let me interview him at his Costa Mesa home for fear the neighbors would find out what he does.
Instead, he drove to our Santa Ana offices, where he announced himself to our receptionist as “Phillip.” When I told him I thought his name was Michael, he mumbled something about having three names in such a way as to indicate he didn't wish to go into it, and the matter was dropped.
Hayes started his online school in the spring of 2000, and after several mentions on Salon and CNN, the business has grown from a handful of students to thousands looking into building and marketing adult websites. Hayes is near-sheepish when talking about his school's success; he will only say he makes a nice living, one that doesn't require him to actually “work” that much, giving him the time and wherewithal to enjoy a week in New York here, another in Mammoth there, with Vegas squeezed somewhere in between.
Born in Montreal, raised in Corona del Mar, Hayes was one of thousands of dot-comers caught in the industry's collapse. He'd been computer literate since he was five, when his parents gave him an Atari 800. He'd started and sold a few Internet businesses but now found himself with nothing. He was in the Bay Area, looking for work, when he ran into an old friend.
“I went to high school with this guy—he never went to college, he was a happy-go-lucky guy, and he was making 20 grand a month advertising for large adult sites. He'd traffic people to the sites, and the sites would pay him a commission. I was amazed. I'm struggling to make rent, and this guy works about 20 minutes a day making this kinda money. I wanted to learn how, but at the same time, I knew my parents would kill me; any parent would. So I decided I'd kinda go halfway and just open up a school where I would educate other people so my parents could be somewhat proud.”
For a tuition fee of $140, Hayes' school teaches students not only how to build websites, but also how to successfully market them. Since success in this business is based on the amount of customers you can direct to a site, success hinges on the creativity of your site as well as the content you're pushing. The key, Hayes says, is finding a niche.
“You might not be promoting the stuff you like personally. The web consists of males 18-to-whatever, and mostly, they want amateur and teen and Playboy bunnies. We tell people not to look into what they're into because most of the time it's what everyone else is into and the market is already saturated. Niches are great because a lot of people don't want to touch, say, a shemale site. One of the questions I get is 'Isn't the Internet saturated?' I say, 'Yeah, unless you're promoting pregnant Eskimo midgets, and then there are great opportunities.'”
Within weeks, Hayes says, students' sites are getting 100,000 hits per day. Some do it full-time; others supplement their incomes. A favorite success story is that of a local teacher who, after school, works an hour or two at his computer and clears about five grand per month. There are others, many fellow former dot-comers, who thank him for putting food on the table. Still, he says that a person need only have a basic computer and a broadband connection to get started. Startup costs are minimal since initial content to put on your site—photos, video—can be bought inexpensively in bulk. After you've proven yourself, most sites will give you additional content for free.
If it sounds foolproof, it's not. More than one student has attempted to get into the business without telling his family about it, figuring they can do it on the side in anonymity.
“We really discourage people from doing that,” Hayes says. “In fact, the only people who seem to use our money-back guarantee are the people who got into it without telling anyone, and then their spouse or kids found out.”
Which is why Hayes makes no secret of his line of work to the women he dates, much to his detriment so far.
“I've had girls, they're interested, we have great conversations, and then that point in the evening comes when they ask what I do; I've had them literally do 180s—just swoosh, walk away—when I tell them. They look at me like they want to slap me. The thing is this is my job. I maybe look at material for 10 to 20 minutes a day at most, and that's to find interesting galleries for students to critique and get ideas. Mostly I answer e-mails and talk to students about their problems. On our site, I think there are four pictures. It's really a normal dot-com job. People who already know me understand that.”
But the same people, who know how it wears on him, have encouraged him to get out, take the lessons he's learned and apply them to selling something else.
“People say, 'Why don't you use the same business model to sell something else like toothpaste?' Believe me, I've thought about it. I've tried it. The fact is people don't want toothpaste.”
Unless, perhaps, a pregnant Eskimo midget is squeezing it.
“People ask me if I'm going to do this the rest of my life? I ask myself that every day. I want to get out, I really do, but what would I do?”
Well, immediate plans include developing a school adult site—aimed at people who'd like to see young and old women brought together for some May-December lesbian love. Hayes says he's toying with a web address of something like AuntsInYourPants.com.
